Friday, 31 August 2018

Police, Thieves and Merchants: Chapter 6, Coming With Malice

Cax looked blearily around him
at the village settling down for the night. The police women had
seemed professional enough, though the thought kept nagging at him at
what the two of them could really hope to find against a band of
thieves easily able to de-materialise into the wilderness. A smith
quietly cleared up his tools as dusk settled around him. The sound of
merry laughter came from his right as two boys and three girls played
together, their father keeping a watchful eye on them as he creaked
back in a rickety chair, a pipe cheerily smoking away in his mouth.

“I wonder if he has a
spare?” Cax thought before deciding against joining. Children could
be really annoying at times. Instead he reluctantly turned back into
the inn where his belligerent travelling companions were sipping
wine, minus one or two.

Briax was finishing
helping the smith collect up her tools.

“You don't have to help me
you know Briax?” She was in her late twenties, with brown hair
curled down to her shoulders and a thick-set build at medium height.

“Well you did so well with
the cart today I had to return the favour,” he replied easing his
face into a smile.

“Usually people go to the
wood experts when they need something like that doing,” she
commented eyes focused on lifting the tools back onto their hooks.
Briax had seen just such a person: an old, large man sat dozing
outside his carpentry workplace. He remembered pausing to notice how
the whiskers nuzzled under carpenter's nose had lifted with each
snore, then moved on to find someone much more.. interesting to help.

“Yes.. well I guess I'm not
aware of the local professions.”

“Yet unable to read the word
smithy on the front of my door?” A quirky, quizzical yet amused
smile flitting across her face.

“Precisely, I was in such a
rush I had no time for reading Miss..? Or is it Mrs?” Briax asked
while leaning forward to inspect the underside of a hammer as if it
held great interest to him.

“It's Jen, like I've already
told you.”

“But is it Miss Jen or Mrs?”

“I think those tools are
just about done, what was that you said about a drink after all this
hard work?” Jen said while glancing at the diminishing sunlight out
of the window, as if confirming with herself that it was time for
such things.

Briax paused his inspection
and looked up.

“Oh yes, the only place I
know around here is the inn we're staying at though and that's full
of morons.” He added a sly smile on his lips.

“Didn't you say you were the
only travellers staying there tonight?”

“Yes, did you have any other
ideas?”

She turned to usher him out of
the door so she could lock up saying,

“Woodsworth doesn't have
that many places like that to go to, but there's one or two I can
think of.”

The pub was a short walk
from the smithy, right at the edge of the village with the trees from
the forest rising up behind it. A significant amount of loud, rowdy
voices could be heard as they approached, broken up by the occasional
crash and slap.

“What's that?” Briax
asked.

“Sounds like a tussle,”
affirmed Jen as the door burst open in front of them. A large
muscular womann came hurtling through, long limbs flailing and a
scream of outrage spurting from her lips. Throx stood in the doorway,
triumph outlined on his facial expression and body language.

Before Briax could react
the woman was hammering into Throx's belly. Throx, proud at never
being one to back down easily, managed to roll them both onto the
floor where they lay grappling with each other.

“Lae stop it!” Jen called
out aghast, trying to position herself close enough to the tumbling,
whirling pile of limbs in order to prise them apart. Lae looked up
momentarily and locked eyes with Jen, before clocking Throx around
the head and picking herself up. She easily towered above them all
once she had gotten herself upright.

“Enough tough guy, looks
like the local smithy wants a drink.”

“That's right” Jen stated,
“and I'd appreciate not having to walk over a rolling pair of asses
to do so,” smiling in spite of her words.

“What were you doing?” she
asked.

“Fighting.”

“I mean why?”

“She said this village had
the finest wine for over a hundred miles!” Throx cut in
indignantly.

“I had to correct her.. and
then she decided to throw me a punch.”

“You were asking for it,”
Lae growled.

“That's what they all say.”

“You were literally asking
for it, demanding I put my fist where my mouth was – so I did,”
Lae confirmed in her rough voice smiling smugly.

There was a slight pause as
Briax and Jen exchanged a brief confused look.

“Yer.. I guess you did,”
Throx said wiping the back of his hand across his forehead before
barking out a laugh.

“Let's go inside,” Jen
said looking at Briax.

“Very good,” Throx
interrupted. “I still have plenty of beer left.”

“I didn't mean..”

“I can show you all a thing
or two about drinking. Oh Briax I didn't know you were here!” Throx
bellowed, noticing Briax for the first time.

Briax wasn't paying
attention to Throx. His eyes were distant, glued to the rear of the
inn where several shadows had begun emerging from the tree-line. The
movement rippled and formed into a large body of people appearing as
if from nowhere in the low, dusk sun glinting indiscriminately off
knives or arrowheads glistening threateningly from within the mass.

“Get inside,” Briax
hissed as the others looked around at the first thrum of a bowstring
and screams piercing the cooling evening air.

The four of them bundled
inside the drinking establishment, a small crowd of people at various
stages of drunkenness turning to stare. Most weren't aware at all of
the commotion manifesting itself outside, though worry had dawned on
the face of a few. Lae quickly grabbed the block to lock the door and
Jen helped her place it on.

“Shut the shutters!”
Briax yelled all attention in the establishment now firmly placed on
their little group. Throx began helping him shut the exterior light
out with very little help from the people within.

“What's going on?” the
bartender called loudly and firmly, clearly sober enough to be aware
this wasn't simply a case of drunken shenanigans in the wake of the
growing commotion outside. The rest of the crowd were either
muttering among themselves or carried on drinking. In addition, a
couple were demanding Lae to let them out and none were helping shut
the windows. Jen turned to answer the questioning bar staff as a
crash resonated around the building. A fist protruded from one of the
windows on the far side of the room encased in a deathly black glove
far from Throx or Briax's efforts. This initiated a flurry of
activity around the pub as the majority of occupants reacted to the
threat. One such was a short, squat, round man who flung himself
forward to fight off the ferocious fist forcing it's way further into
the room. He managed to throw the huge, emerging arm back through the
window upon impact only to meet instant retribution for his efforts
in the form of an arrow buzzing into his chest from the open window.
He fell to the floor to begin an everlasting habit of laying down
still. The screams that now could be heard from outside now echoed
inside the pub as panic spread at the sight of the dead defender.

“Those shutters won't hold
for long,” someone shouted desperately as Briax finally managed to
finish off the work of the dead man and lock up the final window.
Banging immediately spewed forth from several of the windows on the
far side of the bar, indicating where the intruders efforts were
directed. A keen wailing had begun distinct from the loud kerfuffle,
identifying the wife or girlfriend of the dead man as his body was
unceremoniously dragged to the centre of the room by Throx. This was
to make way for the table and chairs being brought forth by several
of the occupants to form a barricade across the windows as the heavy
shutters already began to splinter and wither under the pressure. Lae
searched around the rest of the pub, mind desperately pleading with
herself that the attackers were looking for a simple, rapid raid and
would soon grow tired and give up on the barricaded public house.

“The back door!” the
bartender suddenly exclaimed sharply to her left. “It goes into the
kitchens and I bet the lock won't hold much against that determined
assault,” he continued nodding towards the cacophony of noise at
the rear of the main hall.

Lae followed by Jen,
sprinted into the kitchens through the door adjacent to the bar. She
was met by the sight of a bedraggled youth dressed as a cook and
using what strength he had left to hold the door while simultaneously
calling for help. The door splintered behind him as an axe came
charging through the wooden architecture to lodge itself deep in his
back. The body underneath the axe went limp and Lae spun around
gasping in shock and fear. Jen allowed a brief scream and Lae yelled
at her to run as she pulled her back towards the bar. They crashed
into the bartender and a couple of women who were rushing to their
aid.

“This place is breached”
Lae gasped at them as she struggled back onto her feet.

“We need to get out of
here.”

Back near the main entrance a
few drinking buddies had come to the same conclusion. The front door
remained relatively undisturbed beyond the occasional knock. Two
young men were shouting at anyone who would listen to get ready to
run as they positioned themselves next to the locking bar. Briax and
Throx were helping increase the barricade at the rear of the bar.
Their efforts were increasingly becoming fruitless as the attackers
had managed to get hold of several axes and were chopping their way
through the wreckage that greeted them through the windows. A young
woman from the pro-escape party was trying to convince a third drunk
man to put down his drink and come.

“Come on Fal let's go, we
need to go” she fearfully pleaded dragging at his arm.

“Why later, we've got to
live in the moment.” He pointed his bony, accusing finger at her,
“you never live in the moment Kat. You need to relax!”

“For the last time, we're
being attacked!” Kat pleaded, attempting to drag him with all her
might towards the door. Fal turned around and glared at the
barricade. The defenders were all abandoning their efforts and
fleeing for the front door as splinters flicked out from the shaking
furniture defences, emphasised by the deafening, crunching crashes
gaining in volume with each one. Fal looked back at Kat, suddenly
serious.

“Attack of the tables and
chairs Kat, I told you this day was coming! You never listen.” The
bar was hurled from the front door and the crowd of people clawing to
get outside burst through into the uncertain wilderness their village
had become. Kat kept trying to drag at Fal but he refused to budge.

“Look Kat, I've got
reinforcements! Fuck those chairs.”

Kat moaned in defeat as she
looked where Fal was indicating before leaving him to his his fate
and running for the doors as the menacing figures came bursting into
the main bar from the kitchens. Kat was allowed to escape as the
thieves focused on salvaging what they could from the bar.

“Alright lads,” Fal called
out in far too casual a tone for his situation. He took a sip from
his drink and nodded back to the crunching furniture behind him.

“What are we gonna do about
this eh? If you've come for a drink hold on a sec as we've got a
situation on our hands.”

Unnoticed by Fal the attackers
were negotiating round the dismantled and destroyed furniture,
finally victorious in their weary attack against the pub. The
expressions on their faces were cold when they realised they had been
beaten by the assailants currently rummaging around the bar. The
thieves circled through the bar as if hunting for the most appealing
dinner in a pack of prey. Some were hurling some of the dry coloured
bottles behind the bar into packs that each of them carried.

“Wine!” a hairy, short
sure-footed man called out triumphantly as he released several
bottles from their cabinet prison below the bar.

“Share it out,” exclaimed
a tall thief kicking away a troublesome chair that refused to
untangle itself from his legs paving their way through the obstacles.
Fal spun round.

“Your not a chair?” he
shouted in drunken wonderment a look of dazed confusion on his face
as the newcomers passed him towards the bar.

“Shut it!” one of them
yelled at him as he passed.

“How much of it is there
back there?” a thief leaning against the bar called. Her wiry frame
seemed to be leaning forward in greedy anticipation yet poised for a
fight at the same time.

“One bottle.”

“We'll take it then.” One
of the tall thieves coming out of the wreckage calmly stated as he
walked around to stand off in front of the bar, his comrades backing
him up on either side. A quiet chill fell on the room as the thieves
from the kitchen all moved to position themselves between him and the
bottle.

“Why would we allow that?”
the woman leaning back against the bar replied coolly.

“There's more of us than you
and you don't want us to knock all four of you out for one bottle of
wine do you?” came the swift, confident reply from a thief casually
sat on a table to the right of Fal, casually flicking his knife into
the air as a malevolent grin spread across his face.

“Perhaps, but once we get
outside we have enough friends to tear it right back out of your
potentially dead hands,” the thief leaning at the bar said
pointedly her body exuding confidence.

“You don't know that..”
the knife wielder affirmed, whipping the knife up into the air once
more with a grim smile as he met her gaze.

“You guys like wine?” Fal
questioned from the centre of the stand-off, still enjoying his drink
while just about keeping up with the conversation.“Why don't you
check out the best wine for 1000 miles? Unlike what that fool
thought..”

“We've got it here you crazy
drunk,” one of the thieves sat on top of the bar retorted.

“That stuff's nothing
compared to some of the selection in the cellar,” Fal managed to
reply slurring his words as he took another drink.

A silent thief who had been
glaring out of the door suddenly turned around as the men and women
in the room exchanged glances. His face was unshaven and hair and
clothing wild and messy, his boots muffled against the floor as he
carefully stepped forward to Fal's table. The other thieves watched
him expectantly as he spoke softly.

“Take us to the cellar.”

“Where's your manners?!”
Fal interrupted, poking him in the chest. “I offer you the chance
to drink the finest wine I know of and you can't even say please?”

The thief paused for a second
and then smiled slowly.

“I'm sorry,” he spoke with
precision. “Please.”

“Right!” Fal shouted,
getting up. “Let's get you that wine then.”

Fal led the thieves back
towards the kitchens to a little crevice to the right of the bar
where a trapdoor resided, hidden from view.

“Gents,” he declared
proudly rotating on the spot to face them after lifting the door
open. “Ladies, you are going to love this.”